On this episode we are once again joined by Naama Blatman-Thomas (a PhD candidate from Israel who has done field work with Palestinian groups in Karmiel) and Mark Thomas (an American activist who has lived in both Israel and Palestine, including spending years in Palestinian refugee camps). They discuss how you can take action against the Occupation of Palestine, focused on the Boycotts, Divestments and Sanctions (BDS) campaign – which includes boycotting companies benefiting from the Occupation. You can find out more information about the BDS campaign at Pacbi.org. They also discuss the one state and two state solutions to the conflict, growing fascism in Israel, and Israeli’s and Palestinian’s working together for human rights. You can hear the first part of this interview on our last episode: Episode 62: Exaggerated Threats and the Bombing of Civilians – Israel/Palestine 101.

Before we get into the interview, we give some updates. We discuss the end of the 12 hour truce and mention that the Palestinian death toll has gone over 1000 – 75% of those killed were civilians, according to the United Nations. So far there have been 45 Israeli deaths – 42 soldiers, 2 Israeli civilians and one Thai agricultural worker. We also discuss the protests around the world against Israeli human rights abuses – including in France, Perth and about 10 000 people protesting in the West Bank. The West Bank protest was in reaction to the bombing of a United Nations shelter, which was strongly condemned by the UN. We also condemn Anti-Semitic attacks in Britain.

You can listen to a short (6 minute) version of this episode, where Naama and Mark discuss the BDS campaign, here: Boycott Israel’s Apartheid! You can subscribe to these short versions of our episodes through Omny.

On this episode we are joined by Naama Blatman-Thomas (a PhD candidate from Israel who has done field work with Palestinian groups in Karmiel) and Mark Thomas (an American activist who has lived in both Israel and Palestine, including spending years in Palestinian refugee camps) for most of this episode. They discuss the recent escalation in Gaza, the Israeli government censoring the fact that the Israeli citizens who were kidnapped were killed right away – in order for anti-Palestinian sentiment to grow, challenge the idea that criticisms of Israel’s human rights abuses are anti-Semitic and cover the broader context behind the recent escalation in Gaza. Also covered on the episode is Tamil refugees being imprisoned on a locked ship while the High Court decides their fate, Amnesty International’s website about Australian government refugee policy secretsandlives.com.au, us crashing a government press conference and we introduce the new segment ‘Let’s Talk Hockey’.

You can listen to the second part of the interview with Naama and Mark here: Episode 63: Take Action Against Occupation!. Naama and Mark recommend people check out The Electronic Intafada for more information on Israel/Palestine. You can also listen to our 16th episode Long Live Palestine, where we gave an introduction to the conflict. We’re only two members away from 30 members. If we get to 30 by the 24th of July, we’ll upgrade our account so all of our episodes (including our 16th on Palestine) will be available on iTunes, Stitcher and Cyber Ears – rather than only the most recent 30 or so. You can find out about becoming a member of our show here and you can see the new mics we’ve been able to buy thanks to our members here.

You can listen to a short (8 minute) version of this episode, where Naama and Mark discuss the recent escalation in Gaza, here: Gaza Under Siege. You can subscribe to these short versions of our episodes through Omny.